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Nielsen Will Start to Measure TV Habits of College Students

Nielsen Media Research announced last week that it would include college students living away from home in its television ratings beginning in early 2007, a move that could bolster ratings on networks like Fox, MTV and the WB, which cater to younger viewers.

Currently college students are not included in the Nielsen ratings, which measure viewing habits in sample homes to determine how many people in certain age and demographic groups watch television programs. Networks and advertisers rely on the ratings to sell commercials, and the exclusion of college students who live away from home omits a potentially influential demographic. According to Nielsen, these students watch an average of 24.3 hours of television a week.

The announcement followed a two-year test that was sponsored by several Nielsen subscribers, including Turner Broadcasting, the WB, CBS, MTV, Fox and ESPN. For such networks, the decision was welcome.

"It's very exciting, after all this time," said Garth Ancier, chairman of the WB network, who said that programs like "Smallville" and "Gilmore Girls," which feature teenage and college-age characters, would benefit the most from the change. "In a business like ours, every tenth of a rating point is worth tens of thousands of dollars," he said.

Only students whose families already participate in Nielsen's television surveys will have their viewing habits measured, meaning that the college students will be seen as part of their families rather than as new, independent households. But for the first time, the ratings will reflect viewing habits in dorm rooms, fraternity and sorority houses, and off-campus apartments.

According to Nielson, the inclusion of college students could increase the viewing levels in the 18- to 24-year-old age group by 3 to 12 percent, which could result in ratings increases of 0.2 to 1.0 points for programs. The impact would vary for each network, depending on the ratings they currently receive.

Small networks may perceive that they will benefit the most from the change, said Melva Benoit, a senior vice president at Fox Broadcasting. But Fox, which Ms. Benoit said aims at a younger demographic than the other major networks, is also excited about the new Nielsen system. Fox expects to see the biggest increase in ratings for "The O.C." and baseball games, according to Ms. Benoit.

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Two smaller broadcast networks, the WB and UPN, will no longer exist by the time the viewing habits of college students are officially measured. But their offspring, the CW network, which will start up in the fall, expects to carry over the most popular programming and to set its sights for the same young demographic.

David Poltrack, the president of CBS Vision, the research department of CBS, said that the update to the ratings system would be good news for CW. He cited "Gilmore Girls" and "Veronica Mars" on UPN, both of which may move to the new network, as two shows that had received "appreciable increases" in their ratings during the two-year study.

Certain cable networks also expect to benefit. A group of freshmen (who were not part of the Nielsen pilot project) at American University in Washington, which provides free cable and HBO in its residence halls, said that they watched between 5 and 18 hours of television in one week, the majority of those sports news programs like SportsCenter on ESPN, or baseball and football games. Huw Roberts, 18, said that on a normal day he watched ESPN and ESPN News. "I only watch series if other people are watching them," he said.

According to Artie Bulgrin, the senior vice president for research and sales development for ESPN and ABC Sports, ESPN counts on such viewership patterns from college students. "Our sports news and information programs are viewed disproportionately on college campuses," he said. "It's a critical demographic, incredibly important to advertisers because they are emerging consumers."

College students are only one unmeasured viewer group of many for networks like ESPN, which is often the default channel in restaurants and bars. Nielsen does not currently measure such group viewing, although the recognition of college viewing habits may be a step in that direction.